The tornado left a scar 58 kilometers (36 miles) long and up to 1.3 kilometers (0.8 miles) wide. With winds that topped 297 kilometers (185 miles), the storm was rated an EF4 on the enhanced Fujita scale. Ten residents of Winston County died as a result of the storm.

At least nine tornadoes hit Mississippi that day, including EF3 tornadoes in Tupelo and Richland. The tornadoes were part of a larger weather pattern that produced about 79 tornadoes from Nebraska to North Carolina between April 27–29. On May 2, the Earth-Observing 1 satellite captured a similar image of tornado damage in Mayflower, Arkansas.